Wandering Memories
by Ashtrees
Summary: Sherlock spends some time with his father by taking him on a tour of his memories within his Mind Palace.


**Wandering Memories**

Memories are soft and malleable; often squashed and shaped and stretched into a form which is pleasing to a person's sensibilities, so that they only remember what they want to remember. But, they also lack tensile strength, only a weak force is needed before they snap and drift away in shreds into the abyss.

I had suddenly found myself locked in my Mind Palace, roving aimlessly through the corridors, but never visiting a specific room. The exits had been bricked up and the windows reduced to painted squares on the walls. Obviously my mind had some aim for keeping me captive, but I was unaware of it.

I continued to walk around, searching for the reason for my imprisonment. It didn't take long to find it. No, it didn't take long to find _him_.

_He_ was not in his proper place. _He_ must have had somehow broken out of his apartment (because I only allow the best of people to occupy a whole apartment within my mind) and was wandering around as aimlessly as I had been doing. I could not be angry with him though. Wandering off is a common behaviour for people of his condition.

I came across him on the Pi staircase, so called because I don't know myself how long it goes on for. It was an early mental exercise to see if I could keep expanding my Mind Palace infinitely. It seems that the answer is yes. The steps keep going on and on, I never reach the top. There are doors set at regular intervals in the surrounding stone wall, shortcuts to different rooms and corridors. The doors themselves are in a repeating pattern: the door leading to the main hall comes every fifty steps, and the one leading to the Crime Archive room comes every hundred steps. Those are the essential doors.

But, there _he_ was, standing before me. He looked older than ever, looked lost, bewildered and frightened. My mouth went dry to see him in such a state. I felt an odd sense of guilt that he had lost himself on the Pi staircase, a place I sometimes irrationally worry about losing myself in.

He frowned when he saw me, his features betraying an eternal battle to snatch helplessly at fraying memories, as difficult a task as trying to steal a drifting dust mote away from a shaft of light. As your hand darts forward to take it, it spirals away on the churning air currents. But, his face cleared as he recognised me.

"Do you have my memories, William?" he rasped. "I can't find them."

The distress in his voice was clear. The desperate look on his face sickened me. My father was never a desperate man. He was the rock of our family, smoothing over all of the madness and chaos his wife and children heaped down on him.

"William, I'm forgetting things. Help me."

Redbeard's door was only two steps ahead of me. For a moment my childish side considered running through it, slamming it closed behind me and abandoning my husk of a father to climb the Pi stairs for the rest of my existence. Because I couldn't help him. There is nothing to be done for him. His real life counterpart is going downhill fast now and the decline will only increase.

However, I knew that it was his disease which frightened me because it could happen to me. I didn't want anything to do with it, didn't even want to be close to it.

I don't like to be controlled by fear or by any other emotion. During my time spent with John I have (according to Mrs Hudson) softened up and that is apparently a good thing. But, I will be hard to this. I won't allow it to devastate me, although the potential is there.

So, I ignored Redbeard's door and walked up to my father, smiling what I hoped was a gentle smile. "Come with me," I said, taking his arm. "You can share my memories."

He smiled like a lost child rescued by a benevolent stranger and it hurt me to see it.

I lead him to the rooms where I had stored the best of my childhood memories. He laughed at the memories of me dressing up as a pirate, doing everything I could to be swashbuckling, and plundering Mycroft's room; he cried when we saw Redbeard being taken away to the vet one last time because he observed it through my eyes. He didn't cry when I showed him his 25th wedding anniversary, when he danced with Mother. Instead he swallowed heavily, eyes unblinking, drinking in every detail, trying to make the memory indestructible and untouchable by the disease eating away at his mind. Tears would have only distorted the memory.

I show him Christmases, and summer holidays, and graduation celebrations, and the hours whiled away playing board games. I show him the very best of times and not the times where Mycroft and I bickered needlessly, or the two weeks Mother spent considering if she wanted to divorce him. I skipped over the time I had spent in rehab. That would have only broken him a second time. He _almost _opened the door to the Adler case, but I wasn't sure if he would approve of that one, so I dragged him away. I showed him my first meetings with Molly, Lestrade and John. I showed him the thrill of the chase and the exhilaration of solving the case.

I stopped then because I realised that I was showing him _my_ life and my world. I couldn't show him the time where he first met my mother or allow him to relish the moment when he realised that he loved her. I couldn't help him to relive the wonder of holding his baby sons for the first times.

All of those experiences, all of those emotions, which shapes a person should be eternal, should be as hard as diamonds, never fading, never distorting. But, they are not. They are weak. No memory is set in stone, but we take them for granted.

I have always known that life is unfair, but my father's situation is causing me to relearn that truth over and over again. And it hurts a little more each time, like being whipped in the same spot continually, allowing no time for the wound to heal.

After he had hummed his approval of the climax to the H.O.U.N.D case, my Mind Palace was finally satisfied that I had done what I was supposed to do. An Exit had appeared in the space immediately behind us. The door swung open and the exit sign flashed. Clearly, I had no choice but to walk through it. I resented how pushy my subconscious was being that day.

"I could stay a little longer," I told my father, because after my initial hesitation I _wanted_ to stay with him, wanted to do something for him which I couldn't do in the real world.

My father shook his head.

"I'll stay," I insisted. Already I was sketching out a plan to recreate some of his memories for him. All I would have to do is to imagine what it was like for him during that first time with Mother. They've told me enough times and in enough detail.

But, he threw his arms around me, pulling me close.

"Thank you, William. Sorry, _Sherlock_," he whispers. "But, you know that you should be spending time with the Real World me. Don't be afraid. There is still good times to be enjoyed together."

"Not enough time," I mutter.

"I will see you soon. Off you go."

And he pushed me with a surprising amount of strength for a man his age. I stumbled through the Exit, tripping over the ledge and back into the darkness.

oOo

I opened my eyes, clicking off the flashing alarm clock. I spent a minutes staring at my bedroom ceiling, pretending that all is well with the Holmes family. But, that is a too sentimental notion for me to want to sustain for long. So, I threw back the covers and padded downstairs to make my parents a pot of tea. It was a first for me.

I had never been the type to want to visit home and they both knew that. But, it was time to decide on how my father wishes to be cared for while he was still able to make some decisions. Mother has been in denial about his Alzheimer's for a long while, but now she had to face reality.

I had reached the landing when I remembered that Mycroft was also there, probably still snoring away when he should up and about, making the most of the day. I started scheming - Father was always the one to calm down arguments and surely something familiar happening would be soothing to him?

That was when I decided to pour a jug of cold water over Mycroft's head while he slept. There was shouting and screaming and death threats, but my Father managed to briefly see through the fog obscuring his mind long enough to end the fighting. He couldn't remember why Mycroft and I had come to visit, but for a short time he had come back to us.


End file.
